Homeschool Geography

Jack loves Google Earth.

It really is a cool program. It lets you look at satellite pictures of pretty much the entire planet, and each new release has cool new toys. Since you can zoom out and see the whole planet as though from the moon, or zoom in to see your own car in the parking lot at work, it makes it relatively easy to help make the leap from globe to map, to the world around us.

At four, I'm pretty sure Jack hasn't really made the leap to recognizing our house from the roof view one gets on Google Earth, but he does enjoy starting at our house and visiting Mormor in her suburban house in Bell Post Hill, then Grandma in her suburb in San Antonio, then his brothers in Sweden and Australia...which he recognizes by the labels we've attached.

All of his Aunts and Uncles are on there, too, and as he races around the planet, he learns things. He found the Antarctic and saw that it is indeed covered with snow! And it's not far (as these things go) from Mormor's house. The Arctic, on the other hand, is closer to Bella and Leo's house.

But it is turning out that Google Earth has other benefits in teaching Geography.

Jack's rule is that he can check out pretty much any book from the library, whether Mamma thinks it has any redeeming value or not. (Books we pay for have to pass the twaddle test.) He recently checked out Astro Boy, where he learned about the concept of earthquakes. Later he was playing on Google Earth and he noticed earthquake icons. After a few minutes, he realized that where ever he saw a lot of earthquakes, he also saw a lot of volcanoes! He explored a bit more and verified that where ever he found a lot of earthquakes there were always volcanoes nearby.

So we checked out some books and videos that explored why that is. I'm pretty sure he didn't follow the science in either the books or the videos, but he enjoyed the videos anyway, and we've started to set an excellent precedent that whatever he discovers, we will help him get more information about -- and at this stage there is *lots* of information out there, if not always aimed at Jack's level of understanding.

In exploring a little more, I also found that there are a lot of other people doing interesting work with Google Earth, and you can use GE to explore all kinds of things - - from the growth of London to world population to rising sea levels ... I haven't looked at all the options -- but if your child is older, you might want to!

I have the feeling I had a lot more to say -- but I'm late hitting the shower and I seem to be developing a flu so I'll leave it at that for now. If this is less than coherent, I do apologize. More when my brain gets back from wherever it has wandered off to.